Point of contact igor mann read. Points of contact. Simple ideas to improve your marketing. iconic quotes from the book by Igor Mann, Dmitry Turusin "Points of Contact"

28.10.2019

This book appeared a relatively long time ago and is not the last work of Igor Mann. Nevertheless, you cannot pass it by, because it is devoted to a topic that many (for some reason) are somewhere in prostration. And this book was written by Igor in collaboration with his young colleague Dmitry Turusin.

Touchpoints are the first impression of your business. And as Coco Chanel said - "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression."

This book is sure to help you make a good first impression. It does not need to be read like fiction. It should be known with every sentence.

Yes, it is relatively small in volume, but this does not touch its merits. At a minimum, there is no "water" and philosophical reflections about what everyone knows without the author.

Bribed in the book is that a lot of phrases can be elevated to the rank of aphorisms.

So, "Points of Contact" ...

Every time a customer comes into contact with a company, there is a certain “point of contact”. It can even be something that does not immediately come to mind:

secretary's voice
seal
documentation
product usage instructions
site loading speed

In total, Igor and Dmitry identify a large number of contact points, there is even a separate list, the beginning of which is already filled out for you. All that remains is to continue filling it, taking into account the specifics of their activities. Are you ready to find 100 points, in each of which fate is decided whether to be your client or not? Igor and Dmitry's book to help!

We understand that each individual business has a different number of points of contact.

A simple rule is bigger company, the more points of contact with customers. Imagine how many points of contact a nationwide retail network company has...

The whole point is that each of these points must appear before the client in an appropriate way. And if at the very beginning I spoke only about the first impression, then the task of the company is to maintain such a positive impression always, and not just at the moment of the first contact.

Because if the third or fourth contact of the client disappoints, there is immediately a big risk, whether the fifth contact and all subsequent ...

The main advantage of this book is that after reading it, there is a desire to urgently review your points of contact and put them in order. As if we were given some kind of magic pendel.

A separate bonus is the presence in the book of special fields (and even pages) for your own notes. Such a combination of a book with a workbook.

In principle, the book contains enough pleasant surprises for people with systems thinking.

Well, according to the laws of the review genre, I should now say what (in my subjective opinion) is missing in this book. Perhaps it would be great to add more in the next edition real examples from our domestic marketing. And to show what is a bad point of contact, and what is an excellent one (and why).

But, on the other hand, the presence of specific examples provokes a desire to imitate them. Whether this is good or bad is up to you to decide.

10 iconic quotes from the book "Points of Contact" by Igor Mann, Dmitry Turusin

It is very bad if you are not different from competitors: in business, being like everyone else is a losing strategy
No website - and those who actively use the Internet are no longer your customers
If a offer does not cling, then immediately goes to the bucket, or to “deleted letters”
A business card can be made of metal or turned into a discount card - in this case, the likelihood that it will end up in the trash is drastically reduced
It takes years to earn trust, it only takes one wrong move to lose it.
Almost nothing can be improved in 24 hours. Don't get excited - be patient
Ask your new hires—those who haven't blurted their eyes yet—to walk the customer journey and critique your touchpoints.
Work on points of contact must never end
Nothing spurs creativity and drive in a company like the rapid adoption of brainstorming ideas.
This or that point of contact can become more or less important depending on the time (seasonality, life cycle stage)

Verdict: Every marketer should have this book.

What's this?

How to work with her?

For what?

Read completely

What's this?
This is a notebook book (not to be confused with a folder book). New invention of Igor Mann!

How to work with her?
You read "theory" and immediately take notes and also do practical tasks in designated fields.
Then you gather together the thoughts of the book and your own ideas and implement them.
One or three iterations (cycles) - and your marketing and business will not be recognized! They get much, much better!

For what?
The notebook book will help you organize your work on your points of contact.
Points of contact are a variety of situations and places where the client touches your company. It can be a website, a sign, documentation, business cards, the voice of a secretary, packaging, and so on.
99% of marketers don't put the concept of touch points into practice. But in vain! It is in them that clients make a key decision - to work with you or not.

In this book, the authors:
systematize in the form of laws and observations all available knowledge about the points of contact;
explain how and why different touchpoints affect your customers;
help you identify your points of contact;
and finally offer step by step plan working with them and improving them.
Read, write, analyze your points of contact and learn to manage them. Your marketing will become more effective!

Who is it for?
For entrepreneurs, business leaders and marketers.

From the author
Since 2002, when my first book "Marketing for 100%" was published, I have been developing and popularizing the topic of touch points.
In my opinion, this is a greatly underestimated marketing asset.
Positioning, differentiation, segmentation, life cycle, marketing communications, marketing without a budget are considered in great detail, and the points of contact are still left out.
In seminars, I urge (and listeners can confirm this): "Start marketing with touch points!"
Points of contact were discussed in my books "Marketing Arithmetic for CEOs" and "Marketing Without a Budget".
In our consulting projects, I and my partners in LeadMachine, Marketing Machine or Kongru always start our work with an audit of points of contact.
In general, the topic is really important, necessary and eternal, but articles about points of contact began to appear only recently. Standing publications and not more than a couple of dozen.
The impetus for writing this book was an article by my co-author Dmitry Turusin in the journal "Company Management", in which the laws and consequences of points of contact were formulated. Dmitry worked on this topic at the University of Edinburgh, devoting his bachelor's thesis to it.
I added a description to his materials own technology work with points of contact, we argued about some rules (I had no questions about laws), diluted our observations with examples, interviewed drivers of points of contact (unfortunately, there are still few such specialists in our country) - and, in my opinion, we have an excellent book with a very high efficiency.
Study it carefully.
Analyze your points of contact.
Think about the laws and oversights that apply to your business.
We are confident that the book will pay for itself a thousandfold in the first week of using the concept of points of contact and working on them.
Have fun reading and improve your points of contact!
Take the first step and don't stop.
Our book will make it easier for you.
Improve.
There shouldn't be any answers.

6th edition, enlarged.

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

* * *

Introduction

Since 2002, when my first book Marketing 100% was published, I have been developing and popularizing the topic of touch points.

In my opinion, this is a greatly underestimated marketing asset.

Positioning, differentiation, segmentation, life cycle, marketing communications, marketing without a budget are considered in great detail, and the points of contact are still left out.

In seminars, I urge (and listeners can confirm this): “Start marketing with points of contact!”

Points of contact were discussed in my books Marketing Arithmetic for CEOs (2010) and Marketing Without a Budget (2011).

In our consulting projects, I and my partners in LeadMachine, Marketing Machine or Kongru always start our work with an audit of points of contact.

In general, the topic is really important, necessary and eternal, but articles about points of contact began to appear only recently. There are no more than a couple of dozen official publications.

The impetus for writing this book was an article by my co-author Dmitry Turusin in the journal Company Management, in which the laws and consequences of points of contact were formulated. Dmitry worked on this topic at the University of Edinburgh, devoting his bachelor's thesis to it.

I added to his materials a description of my own technology for working with points of contact, we argued about some rules (I had no questions about laws), diluted our observations with examples, interviewed drivers of points of contact (unfortunately, there are still few of these specialists in our country ) - and, in my opinion, we have an excellent book with a very high efficiency.

Study it carefully.

Analyze your points of contact.

Think about the laws and oversights that apply to your business.

We are confident that the book will pay for itself a thousandfold in the first week of using the concept of points of contact and working on them.

Have fun reading and improve your points of contact!

Take the first step and don't stop.

Our book will make it easier for you.

Improve.

There shouldn't be any answers.

Igor Mann

What are points of contact?

Points of contact are numerous and diverse situations, places and interfaces of contact between the client and the company.

Every time a customer contacts the company in any way, at any time, there is a point of contact.

At the point of contact, customers make decisions that are critical to your business:

Whether to start working with you or not;

Continue to cooperate with you or switch to your competitors.

Surprisingly, points of contact are not of interest to marketing theorists at all, and therefore few marketers (practitioners) apply this concept.

Research in the field marketing communications, positioning, differentiation, marketing mix, segmentation are not so important (not important at all!), if you do not work with points of contact.

To paraphrase Chekhov's hero, successful business all points of contact must be perfect. If a company doesn't have the right touchpoints or they're bad, then there's no customers, no revenue, no business.

Every entrepreneur, company leader and marketer needs to know the points of contact and properly manage them.

This is extremely important for business.

Points of contact are a kind of moments of truth.

The former head of Scandinavian Airlines, Jan Karlzon, seems to have been the first to use the term "moments of truth" (and he has a book of the same name - see appendix 5).

By moments of truth, he means any contact during which the client has the opportunity to express an opinion about the quality of service.

Jan Carlzon proclaimed: “We do not strive to make one thing 100% better. We want to make a thousand things 1% better.”

Following this principle, he turned a struggling airline into one of the best in 22 months, which was contrary to the theory of constraints, according to which you need to improve at bottlenecks.

At the point of contact, the client may change their mind about working with you. At the point of contact, a competitor can beat you (and immediately outsell you).

At the point of contact, you can gain or lose a client, strengthen relationships with him, confirm your high reputation, or, conversely, disappoint him.

An example that has already become a textbook is with the book covers of the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house, which were designed by Tyoma Lebedev.

White, bright, recognizable - they, as a point of contact, greatly contributed to the increase in sales of the "white" series of the publishing house and continue to do so.

Points of contact are a must.

And do it systematically.

Your task is to provide a clear, emotionally strong and positive interaction with customers at points of contact that will make them remember your company, tell others about it and buy exactly your products.

Points of Contact: Three Laws

Back in 1993, Jack Trout and Al Rice, in their book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, talked about the basic laws of marketing that they strongly recommended not to violate. Jack Trout is still convinced that these laws do not change either qualitatively or quantitatively.

But if they exist for marketing in general, then they can exist for its individual tools.

Let's look at three laws that should guide the marketing of points of contact.

Law 1. Each object (business, product or service, division or employee of the company) has more than one point of contact

If you see only one point of contact in the object that you are improving, then you definitely (do not go to the doctor!) You should rest and look at the object with a fresh look a little later or ask colleagues to help you find other points of contact.

Let's illustrate for clarity.

Business contact points:

Product Contact Points:

packaging (perhaps, just to evaluate the packaging of Apple, it is worth buying something from the products of this company), layout, design, name, barcode, instruction manual, warranty card.

Service contact points:

title, presentation, booklet, customer testimonials, case studies, publications… and employees who offer the service.

Employee contact points:

height, build, smile, neat appearance, hairstyle, uniform, badge, posture, speech patterns.

Law 2. Points of contact form chains of contact

Any point of contact consists of several smaller points of contact, and those, in turn, of even smaller ones.

Contact points form a chain of contacts - this law should be known and used.

Law 3. Points of contact must be managed

If a company needs a result in some process, then there must be someone who will manage this process (engage in planning, execution, control).

Working with points of contact is no exception.

Start managing your touchpoints the right way and your marketing and business will become more efficient.

For example, the Atlant-M automotive holding has an employee who is responsible for the periodic assessment of contact points, as well as their continuous improvement.

Does your company not have such an employee? You will have problems.

Any law - be it the law of physics or the state - implies consequences, amendments and rules that explain and supplement it.

If our book were a dissertation (Dmitry Turusin may continue to work on this topic), we would use the word “consequence” or “rule”.

But we will be easier.

Let's call what we found while dealing with this topic and the three laws simply observations and share them with readers.

One observation - one small chapter.

This structure of the book will help you focus on the points of contact that are most interesting and work with them more effectively.

Contact points

Points of contact are the moments when your customers come into contact and potential buyers with your company.

And at that moment, they decide, assessing the attitude towards them at these points of contact, to work with you or not to work, to continue cooperation with you or switch to your competitors.

It would seem that there are few points of contact: printed materials of the company (booklets, brochures, leaflets), Business Cards employees, letterhead, contract template, sign at the entrance to the office, the voice of your secretary and his manner of communicating with customers, company website, template for your corporate presentations, price list, commercial offer.

The task of any company is to make sure that the contact between the client and the company at each of these points is as effective, positive, impressive, pleasant, simple, fast as possible (see the Points of Contact chapter in the book No Budget).

In 2009, Marketingmachine was contacted by a company planning a large advertising campaign.

Her manager read the book No Budget and decided to use our help to test all touchpoints before the start of the advertising campaign to find out how effective each point was.

We worked for two weeks, fixing and evaluating the points of contact of this company (by the way, in reality there were twice as many of them as in the list that was originally presented to us).

In presenting the results to the top management of the company, we started with identified mistakes and oversights at the points of contact, as requested by the CEO.

After listening to us for about ten minutes, he sighed heavily and moved towards the exit. At the door, he turned to his team: “Well, I don’t want to spoil my mood any further. Take note of everything said here, write down the deadlines and those responsible, show me the plan. There will be no advertising campaign until there is order with points of contact.”

He was right: if this company had not put things in order at the points of contact, it would not have received the required number of requests and could not have converted them into contracts.

A pre-audit of points of contact has paid for itself many times over.

Life cycle product

Every product goes through four stages: launch, sales growth, saturation, and decline.

Depending on the stage at which the solution is located, different strategies are used: product, price, promotion and work with channels.

It's important here:

– understand that every decision will “die” sooner or later;

- Getting the product right to the market.

For the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house, it is very important to be able to correctly bring a new book to the market.

We used to do it intuitively.

And then they created a special model, which they called "Blockbuster" (with the light hand of Mikhail Ivanov).

Using this model as a checklist, we could check all the necessary elements involved in creating a blockbuster - a book with the highest possible sales circulation.

We could also constantly improve this model, taking into account new elements and "chips", based on the newly acquired experience.

My advice is to create such a model for launching each new solution in your company.

The target audience

This is the audience you will be reaching out to when you advertise yourself, choosing the timing, communication channels, and appeals.

Segmentation

Segmentation is the division of the market into parts, groups, segments, within which consumers have the same or similar requirements, requests, needs, needs.

Companies do not work with markets, but with segments. Defining and understanding them is one of the most important tasks of marketing.

Here is what Theodore Levitt said about this: “If you don’t think in segments, then you don’t think at all.”

He is echoed by Peter Doyle: "If the firm fails to segment the market, the market will segment the firm."

There are many segmentation criteria: psychographic, demographic, geographical, behavioral. You can read about them in any textbook on marketing.

It's important here:

– know your segments;

- make specific offers to them;

- enter new segments.

Positioning

Read Jack Trout's Positioning. The battle for the minds is a classic of the genre.

Differentiation

In business, it's bad to be like others.

It is necessary to differ, "build up" from competitors.

This is differentiation.

Read Jack Trout's Differentiate or Die, the best book on the subject.

In order to distinguish himself from others, Trout, in particular, suggests:

- to be first;

- own the property;

- to be a leader;

Much is possible even for a very small company.

It is rightly said: "It is better to be different than to be the best."

Entering the saturated highly competitive business book publishing market, we positioned our publishing house as follows: "We are different."

We ordered cover designs from Lebedev Studio (when many of our competitors didn't care about this detail at all).

We published books on a one-book-per-month model (others published as many books as possible in the same time period).

We decided to actively promote each of our books (others, at best, invested in promoting potential bestsellers).

We number our books.

We made (and still make) high demands on the quality of translation and editing.

In general, everything that many others did at random, we began to do carefully.

We were the first to do many things in the business literature publishing market.

We are almost five years old. We are among the leaders in our market.

Being different is profitable.

This is the simplest communication model that advertising (and indeed any communication with any client in general) should be based on: attention - interest - desire - action (see the chapter "How to determine that an advertisement is done well?" in the section "Budget. Planning. Efficiency ").

80% of marketers don't know this model.

That is, it does not sell.

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

USP is the reason why the buyer should buy your solution, preferring it to the solution of competitors.

"What is our USP?" is a question that you can and should ask a marketer every time you discuss a new or re-launch of a particular solution on the market.

In response, you should hear a short and bright phrase - the original reason (reasons) that encourages you to buy and sets you apart from your competitors.

Of course, these 10 terms are not all marketing.

In my blog (www.igormann.ru) some time ago I published the following comic marketing alphabet:

B rand

AT visualization

D differentiation

And innovation

To customer orientation

L loyalty

M marketing

H ovators

O fraternal connection

P positioning

R results (ROI)

FROM segmentation

T ovar (service, solution)

F ocus

C target audience

H four pi (4P)

YU score

As you can see, not even all the letters are used.

If you, having mastered the necessary minimum, begin to study other terms, you will thereby benefit your business as a whole.

Marketing

What it is, I hope you already understand (see the chapter "What is marketing?" in the "Basics" section).

Marketing mix 4P

The foundation of marketing is its basic elements: product, price, sales channels, promotion - on which much more rests.

Surprisingly, the main thing is forgotten - the client.

It is obvious that the word client begins with the letter "c", and not with the letter "p", like all elements of the 4P (product, price, place of sale, promotion) - but was it worth depriving the marketing mix of its main element on this basis?

Approximately 50 years after the appearance of the 4P system, the 4C system appears.

R becomes C.

Product = Customer value (the product turns into value for the customer).

Price = Cost to customer (the price is the cost for the customer).

Place of sale = Convenience to buy (place of sale (sales channels) - in the convenience of buying).

Promotion = Communications (promotion - in communication).

The client appears in this model - but in the background.

The main thing you need to know here:

– The marketing mix should be a system – no element should be lost.

– All elements of the marketing mix must be congruent, balanced. (How is it with Chekhov? “Everything should be fine in a person: both the face, and clothes, and the soul, and thoughts ...” It’s the same with the marketing mix: “Everything should be good in the marketing mix: both the product, and the price, and sales channels, and promotion.)

- The marketing mix, with its seeming theoreticalness, can be used for completely practical purposes (see the exercises “Let's measure the complexes” and “You have 5 minutes left” in the book “Without a budget”).